Past Quotes

It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.

George Steine

Learn from the past, Hope for the future, Live in the present.

Ken Lancaste

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about... things that are past, it is needless to blame.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

I know of no way to judge the future but by the past.

Patrick Henry

This only is denied to God the power to undo the past.

Agathon

So different are the colours of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

Victor Hugo

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

George Orwell

The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

Charles R. Swindoll

Show us a man who never makes a mistake and we will show you a man who never makes anything. The capacity for occasional blundering is inseparable from the capacity to bring things to pass. The only men who are past the danger of making mistakes are the men who sleep at Greenwood.

H. L. Wayland

The present is a rope stretched over the past. The secret to walking it is, you never look down.

Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle, 2004

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

Virginia Woolf

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993

The difference between God and the historians consists above all in the fact that God cannot alter the past.

Samuel Butler, 1835 - 1902

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past. I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast.

Bob Dylan, "If you see her, say hello".

I think we agree, the past is over.

George W. Bush, On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Thomas Jefferson

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

William Shakespeare

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Buddha

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

Robertson Davies, "A Voice from the Attic", 1960

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.

Unknown

The farther behind I leave the past, the closer I am to forging my own character.

Isabelle Eberhardt

It might be said that Lord Rosebery outlived his future by ten years and his past by more than twenty.

Sir Winston Churchill

The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.

Israel Zangwill

Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.

George Du Maurie

We must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory. For children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

The past is a guide post, not a hitching post.

L. Thomas Holdcroft

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Sir Winston Churchill

Trust no future, however pleasant Let the dead past bury its dead Act, - Act in the living Present Heart within and God overhead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every man is his own ancestor, and every man is his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.

Frederick Henry Hedge

I must not fear. Fear is the mind - Killer. Fear is the little - Death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, "Dune".

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.

Rene Descartes

Even God cannot change the past.

Agathon

When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration.

Jawahar Lal Neheru

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present - - which seldom happens to us.

La Bruyere

The first recipe for happiness is Avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.

Andr Maurois